Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for supporting a standalone local gateway (L-GW) service for dual connectivity in a wireless communication system.
Related Art
The 3GPP LTE is a technology for enabling high-speed packet communications. Many schemes have been proposed for the LTE objective including those that aim to reduce user and provider costs, improve service quality, and expand and improve coverage and system capacity. The 3GPP LTE requires reduced cost per bit, increased service availability, flexible use of a frequency band, a simple structure, an open interface, and adequate power consumption of a terminal as an upper-level requirement.
Small cells using low power nodes are considered promising to cope with mobile traffic explosion, especially for hotspot deployments in indoor and outdoor scenarios. A low-power node generally means a node whose transmission power is lower than macro node and base station (BS) classes, for example pico and femto evolved NodeB (eNB) are both applicable. Small cell enhancements for evolved UMTS terrestrial radio access (E-UTRA) and evolved UMTS terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN) will focus on additional functionalities for enhanced performance in hotspot areas for indoor and outdoor using low power nodes.
One of potential solutions for small cell enhancement, dual connectivity has been discussed. Dual connectivity is used to refer to operation where a given UE consumes radio resources provided by at least two different network points connected with non-ideal backhaul. Furthermore, each eNB involved in dual connectivity for a UE may assume different roles. Those roles do not necessarily depend on the eNB's power class and can vary among UEs. Dual connectivity may be one of potential solutions for small cell enhancement.
The LTE network architecture is designed for the centralized gateways where the operator typically only has one or a few gateways. That architecture makes sense for the Internet access because the number of Internet peering points is limited. Different architecture, however, may be needed for the small base stations to allow access to the local content. The local access would be practical for accessing corporate intranet information or accessing a home network over LTE radio.
A local home network (LHN) means a set of (H)eNBs and local gateways (L-GWs) in the standalone GW architecture, where the (H)eNBs have Internet protocol (IP) connectivity for selected IP traffic offload (SIPTO) at the local network (SIPTO@LN) via all the L-GWs.
When dual connectivity is supported for the SIPTO@LN, a few problems may happen, which needs to be required to be addressed.